


Danganronpa 1: Trigger Happy Havoc - Rewritten

by Halcyon_Storm



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:27:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23095588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Halcyon_Storm/pseuds/Halcyon_Storm
Summary: A revision of the characters of Danganronpa 1, from the perspective of someone who played (and moderately enjoyed) the first game. I will go over each character individually, and talk about how I would change and improve them to make a better cast.Obvious spoiler warning for the entirety of the game
Comments: 13
Kudos: 21





	1. Yasuhiro Hagakure: The Ultimate Clairvoyant

The main problem with Yasuhiro is his talent; the ability to tell the future. This trait is what determines most of his character and personality (which isn’t always the case, for example Toko Fukawa rarely talks about her skills as a writer). The issue here is that this ability is almost entirely useless within the confines of the game. He himself proudly states on multiple occasions that “he is right roughly 20% of the time”. This makes him virtually worthless as a utility character, unlike a character such as Chihiro Fujisaki, whose Ultimate ability is of tremendous assistance to the group. Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing, if the character makes up for this with personality traits that are of value to the group. As another example, Sakura Ogami doesn’t use her ability as the Ultimate Martial Artist much, but it is her calm and collected state of mind, and her protective nature that make her a memorable and likeable character. This, too, isn’t the case for Yasuhiro. His entire personality consists of talking about his skills as a clairvoyant, his hatred for the occult, and him being scared of ghosts (with his crippling debts as an added bonus if you invest your free time with him). That’s less than stellar, especially for someone who ends up as one of the few survivors of the game.

In order to improve him as a character, I would first make his Ultimate ability actually work properly. Being able to foretell the future would be ridiculously useful, especially in a life-or-death game like Danganronpa. Of course, tapping into your third eye skills to predict the outcome of a class trial would ruin the entire flow of the game, so some adjustments would have to be made. Instead of the crystal ball type of fortune teller Yasuhiro currently is, I would instead opt to turn him into an Ancient Greek-style oracle, giving vague and cryptic predictions that never seem to make much sense, but in the end always turn out to be right. Imagine for example, he receives a vision that says “Asahina, the blood of your dearest friend will be on your hands”. Everyone takes this as meaning that Hina is destined to be the one to kill Sakura, which raises tensions among the group, particularly against her. Sakura refuses to believe Hiro’s prediction, but he admits that his oracles are never wrong. Then, when Sakura commits suicide and the body is found during the fourth case, Hina runs up to her body and holds her head, which accidentally gets ‘the blood of her dearest friend on her hands’. This way, Hiro’s oracles are ominous and a way to raise the stakes during the game, but without spoiling things for the flow of the story. These oracles range in levels of vagueness, depending on how crucial they are for the game.

The best way to implement this is to have the oracles come to Hiro involuntarily. He doesn’t know when he is about to receive a vision, they just come to him at random times. An interesting personality aspect of this could be that he’s actually slightly afraid of his own powers. The sense of not being in control of himself, even if just for a short amount of time, is terrifying to him, in the same way as the ghosts and the undead scare him. He is desperately trying to get his own powers under control, and this has led him into the hole of fake crystal balls and miracle products. He is persuaded to buy these objects under the promise that they would bring him closer to the spirits that guide him towards his oracles, in return for large sums of money. He continuously buys them, dragging himself further down into debt, never actually successful in bringing him more in tune with his clairvoyant powers.

During the game, he continually tries to force a vision of the end of the game, to see who will survive, and if they will ever see the outside world again. His free-time hangouts would be largely focused on this, trying out different methods of spiritual meditation in the hopes of triggering an oracle (such as asking Hina to help pour buckets of water from the pool on Hiro’s head to simulate meditating under a waterfall, or joining Sakura in a pre-workout warmup to loosen up his muscles and become in tune with his inner self).


	2. Celestia "Celeste" Ludenberg: The Ultimate Gambler

I had to look up what her Ultimate ability is, because it really doesn’t play into her character that much. I distinctly remember Celeste being a pathological liar, to the point where even her real name is a mystery to the public. She’s calm, calculating, and apathetic towards her classmates, mostly distancing herself from any form of social intimacy. She doesn’t really add anything of value to the group in terms of trying to win the game, preventing anyone from dying, or even solving the murders that happen. Instead, she is simply a somewhat intimidating and suspicious presence in the group that keeps an aura of mystery around her, and that is very valuable. In a murder mystery game like Danganronpa, you need to have at least some enigmatic characters that keep the stakes high, and keep you as the player on your toes.

The big thing I would change about Celestia’s character is to play more into her Ultimate ability as a gambler. Her character is not intended to play a large role in the progression of the narrative, and I think it is best kept that way. Instead, she’s more of a filler character, which is far from a negative term. Sometimes filler characters can become your favorites, and stick with you long after finishing the game. Celeste currently lacks the personality to become one of those memorable characters, but that can change. By making her gambling habits an active part of her character, and laying it on extra thick (which wouldn’t be out of place in a game like Danganronpa), she can become a very unique character that isn’t easily forgettable. Let her make all her decisions through games of chance, whether they be small or big. A new area unlocks and she needs to choose what room she will investigate? Celeste pulls out a pair of dice and rolls to let chance decide for her. Let her have an animation where she hides her face behind a fan of playing cards. Even for something big like accusing someone of killing the most recent victim, she will just flip a coin to decide whether they’re guilty or not.

There is one very important factor to mention: her little chance games aren’t like Yasuhiro’s fortunes. Celeste’s ability doesn’t involve her manipulating chance in any way. Her coin flips aren’t magically always correct, but she takes them as an answer nonetheless. And often, even if she’s wrong, her trust in the outcome will lead her to discover something, maybe entirely unrelated, that does help at a later point in time. Say she rolls her dice to determine what room she will investigate when a new floor becomes available, and the outcome is the art room (which is where she ends up killing Kiyotaka). She wasn’t fated to go to that room, it was genuine chance that led her there. But she uses the outcome of that event to plan her murder using the tools she found in that room. That way, her ability isn’t to manipulate chance, but rather to use any outcome to her advantage.

As another example, at the very beginning of the game, she could ask “will I make it out of here alive”, and flip a coin for it. The outcome is yes, which causes her to rather gracefully accept her fate, and for the following days she is completely okay with their predicament, knowing that fate has already decided the outcome anyway. However, she slowly starts doubting what the outcome of that coin flip actually meant, and she eventually comes to the conclusion that it must have meant that if she kills someone, she is fated to get away with it and escape. Obviously, she gets caught, and in her last moments, she confesses that she doesn’t quite mind dying, knowing that she has lost her gambling skill. The coin flip was wrong, according to her. Makoto argues that she’s wrong, and the coin flip would have been right, but she ruined her chances by taking fate into her own hands and killing someone. If she hadn’t done that, she would’ve definitely made it out alive. Frustrated at Makoto for outing her, she demands Monokuma to hurry up and get her punishment over with.

Speaking of punishments, Celeste’s death should also be different in my opinion. The Burning Witch of Versailles is loosely related to her dream of living in a castle she mentions at some point, but that’s a stretch at best. As the Ultimate Gambler, I propose her punishment should be the Russian Roulette Wheel of Death. Celeste is tied by her wrists and ankles onto a giant roulette wheel. The wheel is spun rapidly, while Monokuma stands at a distance, aiming a revolver at the wheel. He shoots one, two, three bullets before the wheel comes to a stop, and all the shots are shown to have missed their target. Monokuma angrily looks at his revolver, throws it away, and pulls out a rapid-fire machine gun instead. The wheel gets another spin, and Monokuma fires wildly at Celeste. When the wheel stops again, it falls apart and onto the ground, where under the broken parts the remnants of Celeste's body can be seen, as a puddle of blood slowly starts to form underneath. This would be so much more befitting of her character, proving that even in her last moments, fate was with her in causing the bullets to miss. However, no amount of fate and chance can prevent you from getting hit by a machine gun.

As for her free-time events, I’d say they should all be focused on her lying problem. Every time, you sit down with Celeste to play some kind of gambling game. The stakes are always something along the lines of “the loser has to confess a secret”. Surprisingly, Makoto ends up winning most of these events, forcing Celestia to admit parts of herself she had previously lied about. She grows worried that her powers are running out, but eventually realizes that having someone to confide in and tell the truth to has actually felt rather refreshing, and she has found an actual friend in Makoto. She finds that losing the games they played may just have been the best outcome for her in the end, and she is satisfied once more.


	3. Leon Kuwata: The Ultimate Baseball Star

As the first culprit of the game, Leon’s character is bound to be less in-depth than most others. After all, you only have a little bit of time to possibly spend with him, and at that point you have 13 other candidates, so chances are you’ll never actually hang out with him at all. And while it would be amazing if every single character could have a gloriously deep backstory with multiple layers and interesting character developments, that’s just not how the game is set up. As it stands, Leon has two main character traits: he is the Ultimate Baseball Star, and he’d rather be the Ultimate Musician instead. He doesn’t have very well-thought-out motives, mostly just “musicians get girls”, which is sufficient enough for someone who doesn’t have a lot of time to describe their motives anyway. In his free-time events he goes back and forth between liking and hating baseball, but ultimately those two traits build most of his personality in the game.

I wouldn’t change a lot about Leon’s character, but instead I would focus more on the relation between him and Sayaka Maizono. Not only do the two end up being each other’s demise, but they also share a common interest in music, with Sayaka being the Ultimate Pop Sensation. It would make a lot of sense for Leon to gravitate towards her, perhaps trying to use her to get himself into the world of music. He is also not at all secretive about his love for girls, and with Sayaka likely being the only girl in the group Leon has ever heard of, alongside Junko, he has more than enough reason to try to get as close to her as possible. There could be a scene at the very beginning where Leon tries to hit up Junko, but she is absolutely not having it (I can imagine Mukuro wouldn’t be too interested in a character like Leon), so instead he goes after Sayaka.

In the short amount of time they are able to spend together, Leon feels a genuine connection with Sayaka. She’s friendly and inviting, and seems to want to honestly help Leon become a proper musician. This then culminates in the betrayal, where Sayaka invites Leon over with the intention of killing him. He realizes that Sayaka’s friendly attitude towards him was just so she could use him as a way out. Knowing that he was used as a ploy, seen by his new friend as nothing but an easy target, he retaliates, killing her. The class trial plays out in the same way, except after Celeste explains that the murder wasn’t self-defense, Leon explains that she’s right, and he only killed her because he couldn’t handle the feeling of being used by someone.


	4. Ishimaru Kiyotaka: The Ultimate Moral Compass

Kiyotaka’s Ultimate ability always confused me greatly while playing the game. It felt weird to have someone be an exemplary moral compass in a game where morality plays such an important role. With the values of right and wrong, hope and despair, and what it means to take someone’s life being such prominent themes, it just doesn’t sound right for one of the characters to essentially have complete control over the moral standards of the game. His Japanese title is “Super High School Level Public Morals Committee Member”, which is simultaneously a far better and far worse name. Taken straight from the Danganronpa Wiki: The "public morals committee", also known as the "disciplinary committee", is a student committee dedicated to the preservation of a proper learning atmosphere and enforcement of the rules around the school (two duties Kiyotaka is very dedicated to fulfilling) that is commonplace in Japanese high schools.

So, taking that definition of Taka’s talent, he isn’t so much a moral compass, but rather someone who strictly adheres to, and highly values the rules of the school. That is much more accurate to the Taka we see in the game. Western education doesn’t really have a position that exactly mirrors the public morals committee, so instead I would probably go for the Ultimate Class Representative instead. It isn’t quite the same, but it feels more fitting than Ultimate Moral Compass.

As far as the rest of Taka’s character is concerned, not that much needs to change in my opinion. He isn’t a character that really takes the foreground for the majority of the game. Instead, he is just another presence, trying to make his way through the days without going crazy. For a character like Taka I think it is more important to have a good optional story to pursue, something that can easily be glossed over, but if you do decide to spend your time with him, he turns out to be a very likeable and interesting character. As it currently stands, his story is alright, but nothing crazy. He has a grandfather who used to be a politician, until he got caught up in a scandal, ruining his family’s name. Through his study at Hope’s Peak Academy, and by being the best student he can possibly be, Taka wants to restore the glory of his family’s name. That would be a decent story, however most of Taka’s free-time events are wasted because of his ‘quirk’, that being that because he studies so much, he has no idea what normal people do or what they talk about. So much time is wasted trying to establish a human connection with Taka, that his actual story ends up actually being glossed over, and that’s a shame.

Instead, your free-time events with Taka could be spent performing tasks that fit with his occupation as an example student: sweeping the halls, taking stock of the kitchen supplies etc. Taka invites Makoto to help him complete his duties (which he entirely put on himself, it isn’t like Monokuma forced him to do these tasks), and while doing so, they strike up conversations. They talk about Taka’s family, his duties as a class representative, and how Taka manages to maintain such a positive attitude despite everything going on around them. Once they have hung out a number of times, and Taka and Makoto have become pretty close friends, Taka confides his biggest secret to Makoto. Monokuma keeps telling the students to kill each other, which Taka obviously doesn’t want to do. But it is an order put on him by the one in charge, and a large part of Taka feels an innate need to obey those orders. Lately, he has had dreams in which he killed someone. He asks Makoto for help, knowing that if this keeps going, it might actually end that way. Makoto then tells him about his family, and about how he’s working so hard to restore the Kiyotaka family name. He asks Taka if killing someone would really make his family proud. The conversation ends with Taka realizing that perhaps sometimes it is better not to follow orders, but to create your own path instead.

Lastly, there is the matter of ‘Kiyondo’, the unlikely fusion of Taka and Mondo’s spirit into one. I’ve been going back and forth on this, but I really believe the game would benefit from leaving out this transformation in its entirety. It doesn’t fit well with the otherwise quasi-realistic setting (as in, even though the events of the game are unrealistic, there is no mentioning of magic or supernatural forces). When Mondo dies, Taka goes into a catatonic state, becoming unresponsive to anyone. He remains this way for a while, as the other students worry about him. Eventually, during one of their morning breakfast meetings, he would finally speak, to make one announcement. He says he now understands what this game is all about. It is only meant to spread misery among everyone. He doesn’t wish to be miserable anymore. If anyone has a desire to kill and make an escape, he will willingly take the position of the victim. After saying this, he leaves, and he isn’t seen again alive. The next time anyone encounters Taka, he will have been killed by Hifumi Yamada in the third murder trial of the game.


	5. Makoto Naegi: The Ultimate Lucky Student

Makoto falls into the same trap as many, many visual-novelesque game protagonists have before. The game desperately wants you to identify with the player character, to make it feel like you are in the game instead of a distant character, and that their actions are, by extension, your actions. However, the limitations of the game don’t allow for this level of freedom, and the protagonist will say things, do things, and make decisions that ultimately don’t always align with your own personality. So, Makoto falls in this unpleasant gray area: he is not a self-insert protagonist, and lives his own life for the most part, but has pretty much no personality whatsoever. In other words, a really boring character. And while that is incredible difficult to prevent, or even to change in hindsight, I do think there are a number of things that could be done to improve him.

Firstly, as the game progresses, Makoto quickly becomes the ‘de facto’ leader of the group. He is the one who leads the class trials, and everyone turns to him for help when things go south. But the game never makes it clear why everyone gravitates towards him. Why isn’t Sakura the leader, since she has such a clear-minded vision, or Kyoko, since she clearly is incredibly intelligent, or Byakuya with his affluent lifestyle that has clearly proven successful. Hell, even Yasuhiro could be an option, if only for the fact that he is by far the oldest and therefore has more life experience. So then why is Makoto the one who is seen as their leader? I would suggest that it should be because Makoto is the ‘True Neutral’ of the group. Everyone else has a clear Ultimate talent that has influenced nearly their entire lives. The one thing that unites everyone in the group is that they’ve all led mostly unconventional lives. Their entire past was dedicated to honing their singular talent, and as a result, they missed out on some essential ‘normal’ life experiences. Perhaps they don’t know what it’s like to be in a normal high school class, or to make friends, or to think rationally without being clouded by your own talent.

That’s the role Makoto could fill in the group. His only talent was being lucky enough to be chosen out of all high schoolers, but other than that his life has been entirely normal. It would make sense for the group to decide that he should be their leader of sorts. Obviously, nobody has ever been in a situation like this before in their lives, so no matter how talented they are, that skill isn’t going to help them now. They look for someone who might have a clearer view of the world around them, in trying to find out what’s going on and how to escape. And that person would be Makoto.

Aside from this, there is one more small thing I would change that I believe would have a large impact, and that has to do with the free-time events. As it stands now, Makoto is always the one who engages the other person, asking them to spend time together. It’s never the other way around. It simply doesn’t make sense for Makoto to go out of his way to spend his time with Mondo or Byakuya, when they have only ever been mean and dismissive to him. This counts tenfold when Genocide Jack is concerned, and the game even says Makoto has no idea why he’s doing this. It takes away from Makoto as a character, and simply makes it feel like he’s a blank slate that gets inserted in situations for the sake of the game, not because they make sense story-wise. Instead, it would be much more fitting for the game if the characters approached you, either to ask for your help with something, or to ask for your advice or whatever. This wouldn’t always be the case, especially once you’ve already hung out with a person a few times it makes sense for Makoto to voluntarily look for someone and ask them to spend some time together. My point is, there is a large difference between Makoto going up to Mondo and saying “Hey person who has punched me and threatened to kill me before, wanna hit up the gym and play ball for a bit?”, and Mondo walking into Makoto and saying “Hey twerp, I’m going to the gym to beef up my muscles, and you’re gonna be my personal coach for today”, and Makoto not daring to say no.

Something important I feel I need to mention is that the gameplay mechanic would not change. You would still go up to that person and choose to spend time with them, but then the ‘cinematic’ would show the character approach you instead. This is to maintain the sense of autonomy in the game. A large part of Danganronpa already feels rather on-rails, and the free-time events are one of the few times you actually have free reign of choosing what you wish to do. Taking even that away by having characters randomly force themselves onto you might subtract from the overall enjoyment of the game, and that’s the last thing I want to happen. It might look a tad weird from the player’s perspective, but I think it would make for an overall more interesting version of Makoto.


End file.
